RESEARCH ARTICLES

Traces of a Lost Language and Number System Discovered

on the North Coast of Peru
Jeffrey Quilter, Marc Zender, Karen Spalding, Régulo Franco Jordán,
César Gálvez Mora, and Juan Castañeda Murga

ABSTRACT Sometime in the early 17th century, at Magdalena de Cao, a community of resettled native peoples in
the Chicama Valley on the North Coast of Peru, a Spaniard used the back of a letter to jot down the terms for numbers
in a local language. Four hundred years later, the authors of this article were able to recover and study this piece
of paper. We present information on this otherwise unknown language, on numeracy, and on cultural relations of
ethnolinguistic groups in pre- and early-post-Conquest northern Peru. Our investigations have determined that, while
several of the Magadalena number terms were likely borrowed from a Quechuan language, the remainder record
a decimal number system in an otherwise unknown language. Historical sources of the region mention at least
two potential candidate languages, Pescadora and Quingnam; however, because neither is documented beyond its
name, a definite connection remains impossible to establish.

Keywords: languages, numbers, Peru, transconquest, indigenous

RESUMEN En los inicios del siglo diecisiete, en el sitio de Magdalena de Cao, una comunidad de indı́genas reducidos
en el valle de Chicama en la costa norte del Perú, un español usó el reverso de una carta para anotar las palabras
que traducı́an números en un idioma local. Cuatrocientos años después, la carta fue recuperada y estudiada por
los autores de este artı́culo. Presentamos información acerca de este idioma desconocido, tanto como sobre los
conceptos numéricos, y sobre las relaciones culturales de grupos etnolinguı́sticos en la costa norte del Perú antes
y después de la conquista español. Nuestras investigaciones habı́an determinado que, mientras algunas de las
palabras numéricas son probablemente prestadas de un idioma quechua, los demás vienen de un sistema numérico
decimal de un idioma hasta ahora desconocido. Las fuentes históricas en la región mencionan al menos dos idiomas
como candidatos potenciales, o sea Pescadora y Quingnam, pero como no sabemos sino esos dos nombres, es
imposible identificar a que idiomas pertenecieron.

THE DISCOVERY AND ITS CONTEXTS
Archaeological excavations at a Colonial Period site on the
North Coast of Peru have revealed the first traces of a
lost language. A combined research team of U.S.–Peruvian
archaeologists at the site of Santa Marı́a Magdalena de Cao
within the El Brujo Archaeological Complex in the Chicama
Valley has found a document that lists a few but important
words that serve as keys to unlocking the intricacies of a
native language that was spoken in prehistory and into the
Colonial Period but has since become extinct.1
Since 2004, our archaeological research has uncovered
the remains of a town and church complex occupied from
1578 to circa 1780 (Franco et al. 2003; Mujica Barreda
2007; Quilter n.d.). This work has resulted in the amassing
of a wide variety of artifacts, including a corpus of paper
documents, all of which are providing new information on
the early Colonial Period in Peru when Spaniards and indige-
nous peoples were struggling in one of the great transitions
of the Early Modern era.
A catastrophic collapse of the walls of the Magdalena de
Cao church compound in the late 17th century trapped a
wide array of materials under piles of adobe bricks. Com-
bined with the remarkable preservative qualities of the dry
desert environment, these materials included items of the

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 112, Issue 3, pp. 357–369, ISSN 0002-7294 online ISSN 1548-1433. 2010
c by the American Anthropological
Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2010.01245.x
358 American Anthropologist • Vol. 112, No. 3 • September 2010
daily lives and religious calling of the Dominican friars who
lived and worked in the compound. Among the many papers
retrieved in our excavations of these deposits is a complete
letter concerning a minor event in the life of the church and
town community. The reverse of this paper, however, was
later used to record a list of terms for numbers in a language
previously unknown to scholars. How and why this doc-
ument was created and later discarded is linked to larger
issues in the history of the site and of Peru.
Although Francisco Pizarro captured the supreme Inka
ruler, Ata Wallpa, in 1532, and the Inka capital, Cuzco,
the following year, it was more than three decades before
Spanish hegemony was firmly consolidated. The tumult of
the conquest struggles included massive depopulation of
indigenous peoples through war, epidemics, and general so-
cial destabilization. One attempt to control the situation
and indigenous peoples was the establishment of reducciones,
FIGURE 1. Map of the archaeological remains of Magdalena de Cao Viejo. The asterisk is placed next to the excavation unit where the document discussed
in the text was found.
Spanish-style towns in which conquered populations were
made to live, forced to abandon their rural homes and com-
munities. The reducciones were places where people of
different regions were often mixed together, all subject to
Spanish civil and religious authorities’ attempts to “civilize”
and Christianize them.
Santa Marı́a Magdalena de Cao was one such reducción.
It was first established near the mouth of the Chicama River,
but that site was abandoned and washed away because of mas-
sive rains and floods in an El Niño event in 1578. The town
inhabitants fled to the El Brujo terrace, several meters above
the deluge, and established a new settlement, the ruins of
which have been the subject of our investigations. The new
town and church complex were built on the remains of an
abandoned temple complex from the Moche era, circa C.E.
100–700 (see Figures 1 and 2). The church complex and
the town prospered for over a century, but in the late 17th
 Quilter et al.
FIGURE 2. Excavating exterior perimeter wall of church compound. Note
the ancient temple in background and the deposits where paper was found
in block at far right.
or early 18th century the church was abandoned, caused or
hastened by an earthquake that collapsed many of its adobe
walls. The town remained occupied, however. Residences
there were single-storied structures made mostly of quincha
(wattle and daub), and so they suffered much less damage
than the tall all-adobe church structures. After the Domini-
cans left, the townspeople mined the ruins of the church
for various materials for their use. At some time, probably
during the first half of the 18th century, the townspeople
also abandoned the site, for reasons still unclear, and moved
four kilometers to the north to the site of the modern com-
munity of Magdalena de Cao. No significant occupation of
the El Brujo terrace subsequently occurred, although a fish-
ing village and lightly built structures for summer residences
were established on the nearby beach, and local agricultural
fields almost certainly continued to be worked.
As the townspeople mined the collapsed church, they
removed and relocated a great variety of materials, deposit-
ing much of the refuse outside the north and west walls of the
former atrium. It was in an excavation unit in one of these
areas, next to the outside of the west atrium wall and just
south of its northwest corner, that we found the document
on which traces of a lost language were written.
When found, the paper was folded; when opened, it
measured 21 centimeters in width and slightly more than
12 centimeters in height (see Figure 3). Writing covered
most of one side of the paper, which had been oriented
so that its width was greater than its height in relation to
the text. We define this side as the obverse because we
assume the letter was written first and then the numbers
were recorded later on the back of the letter.
The proper right and bottom sides of the paper appear
to be original edges while the others were cut from a larger
sheet. To judge from the writing in relation to paper edges,
this cutting must have taken place before the paper received
any text. Creases, both at right angles and diagonal to the
• Traces of a Lost Language and Number System 359
FIGURE 3. Obverse of the document: the letter.
existing edges, indicate that the paper was folded more
than once, likely in relation to the two different texts on
either side of the document. Which text was written first
is difficult to determine with certainty, but the writing that
extends across the width of the document, albeit with a
wide left-hand margin, most likely predates the number list.
At some point in time, the letter was folded from left-to-
right, rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, and then used
to record the numbers.
The relatively extensive text on the obverse of the docu-
ment is a letter to a priest from a servant or agent regarding a
dispute between the priest and a tradesman or merchant over
the price of some cloth, possibly for church use, as for an
altar or liturgical vestment (see Figure 3). The paleographic
transcription and the English translation are as follows:
Mi Padre agora fuy a buscar los dos baras de bramante floresti y
no lo quieren darme nos de a catorce reales bea buesa Paternidad
si lo quiere que luego al Punto le llebara el muchacho y todo lo
mas q.e buesa Paternidad mandase a quien guarde m.s.
De buesa Paternidad Lope Fernandez de uaq.ta
[Father, I just went to get the two varas of fine cotton cloth,
and they do not want to give them to me for 14 reales; your
Fatherhood should decide if you wish the boy to bring it later to
the Punto together with anything else that your Fatherhood who
cares for us commands.
From your Fatherhood, Lope Fernández de Vaqueta]2
The handwriting conforms to a style common in the
early 17th century. The number list, on the folded, reverse
of the paper is written in a different, less florid hand than on
the obverse and with a quill with a thicker nib (see Figure 4).
The recipient of the message may have later used the back
of the letter to record the numbers—although, of course,
other writers cannot be discounted. The person wrote out
the Spanish names for the numbers 1–3 in a single column,
then changed to writing Arabic numerals for the rest of the
sequence on the left-hand side of the page. The numbers
proceed from one through ten. Numbers six and eight are
each followed by a period and then a dash and the others
with only a dash followed by handwritten words for what
360 American Anthropologist • Vol. 112, No. 3 • September 2010
FIGURE 4. Reverse of the document (folded): the number list.
we interpret as the equivalent number in a native language.
After the numeral ten, the sequence continues with 21, 30,
100, and 200.
Both the format and the contents of the brief list sug-
gest that the author may have been recording numbers with
the aim of understanding the numerical system in question,
possibly during or shortly after an interview with a native
informant. This is hard to determine, of course, but it sug-
gests that the recorder understood that by asking for the
numbers in question, the rules of the number system could
be determined. The choice of numbers indicates that the in-
terviewer was numerate and educated because the numbers
queried for native-language equivalents above ten provided
keys to understanding the system’s combinatory rules. The
recorder apparently asked for the terms for the first ten
numbers. Then, he (assuming it was a Spanish cleric) asked
for the next round number in the tens series, 20, and the
following number, 21. The questioner then recorded, pos-
sibly because he had asked for them, the number terms for
30, 100, and 200. This pattern of recording and presumably
questioning implies that the recorder thought that by learn-
ing these numbers he could fill in the rest of the sequence. For
example, that the number term for 22 would be similar to
the manner in which 21 was constructed; the number terms
for 44, 123, or any other number could be produced by a
formula or pattern derived from how 21 was constructed;
and higher-order numbers would follow the same structural
organization, as numbers indeed tend to do. By question-
ing and recording in this manner, the person who created
the document also left posterity a key to understanding that
number system as well as the language of which it was a part.
Before turning to these issues, however, we present a brief
review of what is known of native languages on the North
Coast of Peru in the 17th century.
INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES IN NORTHERN PERU
The indigenous languages of Peru are known primar-
ily through the windows provided by various documents
prepared in the Colonial Period (1532–1821) by literate
Spaniards or native people. As is typical with such docu-
ments, however, information is often incomplete or difficult
to interpret, and there is considerable evidence that many
languages existed that were not mentioned at all or have yet
to be discovered.
The archaeological record of the more remote past iden-
tifies archaeological cultures that are known mostly in out-
line from about 10,000 B.C.E. onward. Then, between
about C.E. 100 and 800, a widespread archaeological cul-
ture known as Moche or Mochica was extant throughout the
North Coast. Whether this was a single state or multiple
polities is a subject of current debate (e.g., see Quilter and
Castillo 2010). No discussion has been made of what lan-
guages were spoken by those people now identified under
the rubric of “Moche,” but it is likely that more than one
tongue was spoken and that no clear connection between
the later language identified as “Mochica” or “Muchik” can
be made.
There were two regions of the Moche culture that
seem to have had slightly different cultural trajectories.
The Northern Moche and the Southern Moche (Castillo and
Donnan 1994) were separated by the Paiján desert; interest-
ingly, after the Moche collapse, the subsequent Lambayeque
(or Sicán) and Chimu archaeological cultures arose, respec-
tively, in the north and south in the same territories previ-
ously occupied by the different Moche groups (Moseley and
Cordy-Collins 1990). Chimu appears to have conquered,
absorbed, or succeeded Lambayeque and then continued to
expand to become one of the largest empires and rivals of
the Inka in late prehistory. Although the Chimu are known
from ethnohistorical records as a political entity referred to
as the Kingdom of Chimor (Rowe 1948), the issue of the
language(s) spoken by members of this culture is uncertain
while those spoken by the archaeological cultures prior to it
are even more so.
The canonical interpretation of the culture history of
Peru attributes the Inka conquest of the North Coast to a
period early in the establishment of the Inka Empire. This
conquest probably occurred in one or two invasions, likely
in the 1460s or early 1470s, by Pachakuti Inka or his son
and heir Thupa Inka (D’Altroy 2002; Rostworowski de Diez
Canseco 1999; Rowe 1948). Although the conquest has been
known since it was first recorded by early chroniclers (e.g.,
Garcilaso de la Vega 1941–45), details of the Inka occupation
of the North Coast remain obscure. Archaeological signa-
tures of the Inka presence are not commonly recognized,
and field research directed to their study is relatively scant.
There is substantial evidence to suggest that the Inka actively
worked to co-opt or coerce local elites into Inka cultural
practices as a means of political control, and it is well known
that they also brought the sons of local leaders to Cuzco
for training in such practices. The degree to which the Inka
 Quilter et al.
actively sought to spread their language beyond a handful of
elites, however, is uncertain. Indeed, what constituted “Inka
language,” by no means a static entity, is presently a topic of
considerable discussion (Cerrón-Palomino 1999; Durston
2007; Heggarty 2005; Urton in press). Although the subject
is hardly settled—and is too involved to discuss in depth
here—it is nonetheless clear to the majority of scholars who
study the topic that many languages were extant in Peru in
late prehistory.
A highly complex linguistic and cultural landscape that
had been created through millennia of human interactions
was still present in the mid-16th-century era of the Spanish
intrusion. The palimpsest of societies and tongues owing
to historical processes of the rise and fall of empires and
movements of peoples was augmented by a variety of specific
cultural practices as well, such as the placing of colonies
across the landscape voluntarily, by communities, as well as
forcibly, as under Inka imperial policy. This led to perhaps
an even more discontinuous patterning of languages than
might otherwise have been the case (Mannheim 1982).
The Spanish recognized widespread “general languages”
(lenguas generales) and local tongues (lenguas particulares).
There were a number of different Quechuan dialects and
languages, and although it has traditionally been assumed
that the Inka spread Cuzco Quechua, some scholars now be-
lieve that the Inka chose the version of the Central Coast as
their imperial lingua franca (Durston 2007) while Inka elites
may have spoken another language (see Heggarty 2005).
Central Coast Quechua, however, is now extinct, and it is
an open question as to how many other variants of Quechua
may have been present in Peru at the time of the Spanish
arrival.
As in Mexico and elsewhere in the Americas, when the
Spanish arrived they adopted the practical policy of learning
local languages to spread the Gospel, rather than attempting
to instruct multitudes of peoples in either Spanish or Latin.
Yet it was also to their advantage to reduce the number
of tongues needed for this enterprise. Thus, they not only
spread some variant of Quechua but also successfully worked
to minimize the number of indigenous languages used in both
missionary and pastoral contexts.
Running counter to the attempt to reduce language
variation, former prehispanic patterning in languages across
the landscape was disturbed by demographic collapses of
varying intensities and population movements as a result
of the Spanish invasion and subsequent political turmoil.
Adding to this complexity, our understanding of languages
and their distributions in the early Colonial Period relies
on reports written by Spaniards whose accounts frequently
are incomplete, vague, and often based on misinformation,
misunderstandings, and the inevitable copying errors at-
tendant to any manuscript tradition. Such complications
enter into any attempt to evaluate the Magdalena de Cao
document.
The indigenous languages of the North Coast have been
studied since the Colonial Period, albeit with varying de-
• Traces of a Lost Language and Number System 361
grees of information available and with different theories
underlying specific studies (Brüning 1989; De la Carrera
y Daza 1939; Grasserie 1896; Middendorf 1892; Torero
1986; Zevallos Quiñones 1941). Different colonial author-
ities state that the fisherfolk of the North Coast spoke their
own language, referred to as “la lengua pescadora” (lit.,
Fisherfolk’s language), “la lengua yunga pescadora” (lit., the
Yunga Pescadora language), or simply “la pescadora” (lit.,
fisherfolks’ [language]). Yunga is a Quechua word meaning
“hot land” or “valley,” but it was used by the Inkas and
Spaniards to refer to the coast as well as other regions, and
it was employed without the pescadora modifier to refer to
the language of the coast. This distinction of two different
languages on the North Coast is almost certainly a reflection
of the socioeconomic organization of the region, in which
fishing communities at the shore likely constituted a differ-
ent social group than inland farmers (Rostworowski de Diez
Canseco 1977).
In his early and extensive treatise of 1644, Fernando
de la Carrera y Daza (1939) clearly used the term Yunga to
refer to what today would be called “Mochica.” At about
the same time, Antonio de la Calancha (1974), a friar of an
Augustinian monastery in the Jequetepeque Valley, stated
that the language of the Chimu monarchs was Quingnam
and that it had spread southward to Lima and northward
to the Jequetepeque Valley, throughout the Chimu coastal
empire. He also indicated that another dialect, called Mochica
or Muchic, was spoken north of this zone along the coast.
Calancha then mentions Pescadora as a third language. All
of this has greatly complicated the question of how many
languages were once spoken on the North Coast.
It is quite possible that some of the people identified
with the Lambayeque or Chimu archaeological cultures
spoke Mochica or a variant of it. Indeed, the noted lin-
guist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino titled one of his works on
Mochica “La Lengua de Naimlap” (1995); in titling it as such,
he referenced a mythological culture hero associated with
an ethnohistorically reported dynasty of the Lambayeque
region. Despite this likelihood, however, the nature, diver-
sity, and spatial patterning of indigenous languages in late
prehistory and even early in the Colonial Period are subjects
that require greater investigation.
The relationships between Quingnam, Mochica, and
Pescadora are particularly unclear. None of these languages
is spoken today, although enough Mochica speakers sur-
vived into the 19th century that various word lists are
available (Salas 2002). No such records exist for Quingnam
or Pescadora, however. Given these complexities, coupled
with the consideration that the term Yunga is used differently
in various colonial sources, scholars often cannot ascertain
to which language the term Yunga refers (Cerrón-Palomino
1995:29–41).
In a volume prepared between 1781 and 1790, the
bishop of Trujillo, Baltasar Jaime Martı́nez de Compañón
(Martı́nez de Compañón 1985; Schjellerup 2008), included a
chart of comparative word lists for eight languages within his
362 American Anthropologist • Vol. 112, No. 3 • September 2010

bishopric, including the North Coast and nearby highlands.

On the chart, “Yunga” is listed as a language of the provinces
of Trujillo and Saña (Zaña). As Martı́nez de Compañón
provided a word list, we can see that what he referred to
as Yunga was clearly what today is referred to as Mochica,
based on extensive word lists collected by Carrera and later
scholars and thanks to its relative longevity as a spoken
tongue. Compañón’s volume also demonstrates that other
North Coast languages including Quingnam—at least as a
tongue recognized as distinct—had ceased to be spoken in
the greater North Coast by this time.
With extensive word lists available only for Mochica, the
relationships of that language with, respectively, Quingnam
and Pescadora must remain highly uncertain. Historically,
opinions have ranged from considering Mochica, Quing-
nam, and Pescadora as three separate languages (Larco Hoyle
1939; Zevallos Quiñones 1946) to viewing them as dialects
of the same tongue (Netherly 1977; Rivet 1949) and to
a proposal that Mochica and Quignam were closely re-
lated while Pescadora was distinctly different (Rabinowitz
1982). More recently, Cerrón-Palomino (1995:29–41) has
reviewed these theories and, following Calancha’s state-
ment, argues that Quingnam was a separate language from
Mochica. Furthermore, he suggests that what locals called
“Pescadora” was Quingnam, spoken throughout the old FIGURE 5. Map of the distribution of indigenous languages in northern
Chimu realm from the area of modern Lima to the Chicama
Peru, after Cerrón-Palomino. The extent of use of Culli is uncertain; see
Valley where it overlapped with Mochica, which was spo-
ken in more northern valleys (see Figure 5). Finally, in Lau in press.
an intriguing study of toponymy (the linguistic study of
place names), Zevallos Quiñones proposes that Quingnam The text on the reverse of the paper is quite well pre-
was spoken in the Chicama, Moche, and Guañape valleys served and relatively easily transcribed. Nonetheless, several
(Zevallos Quiñones 1993), a region conforming to the “core” portions remain unclear. This is in part because of the ap-
area of the Chimu culture. Unfortunately, even if this is ac- parent rapidity with which the list was written but also our
cepted as a valid interpretation of the data, it still does not inability, given the unique nature of this document and its
resolve the problem of Quingnam’s relationship to the other contents, to verify the form of these terms against other
tongues. Neither do we know the economic organization of iterations except where (as thankfully with chari, mari-, apar,
the Chimu: for example, whether fishing communities were bencor, pachac) several forms repeat within the brief list it-
separate from agricultural ones, which might allow for the self. Here follows our working transcription of the list, with
development of the two tongues, or whether occupational uncertain elements queried:
specialization and residential isolation were less in opera-
tion. Absent the requisite comparative linguistic data, the uno—chari
dos—marian
identities and interrelationships of Mochica, Quingnam, and tres—apar
Pescadora must remain an open question. 4—tau
5—himic [?]
6.—sut [?]
REVIEW AND ANALYSIS OF THE NUMBER LIST 7—canchen
8.—mata
Given that there is so much ambiguity concerning the lan- 9—yucan
guages of the North Coast that can only be resolved as 10—bencor
additional research is carried out—and, it is to be hoped, 21. maribencor chari tayac
new discoveries are made—we may now turn to the frag- 30 apar bencor
100 chari pachac
ment of language on the discovered paper. Intriguingly, this 200 mari pachac
archaeological time capsule provides unique data in the form
of a previously unknown language that nonetheless bears The list is clearly a set of numbers, and just as clearly it
unequivocal signs (in the form of borrowed vocabulary) of a incorporates the regularities typical of functional numerical
long history of interaction in the region, begging to be fitted systems. As with many decimal systems, as this appears to
into the linguistic syntheses reviewed above. be, there is no repetition of elements within the first ten
 Quilter et al. • Traces of a Lost Language and Number System 363

numbers, but such repetition becomes commonplace there- TABLE 1. Terms for Numbers in Relevant Andean Languages
after. Thus, apar bencor, identified as “30,” clearly combines
apar (three) with bencor (ten). Literally, the compound signi-
fies “three tens.” Similarly, the higher-order multiples chari
pachac and mari pachac self-evidently encode “100” and “200”;
in those cases, the compounded version of marian (two)
seems to be the reduced form mari-, a pattern strikingly sim-
ilar to, for example, the English three being abbreviated to
thir- when used in thirteen and thirty. The numeral pachac is
likely a borrowing from the Quechuan term pachak meaning
“hundred.”3 As we discuss below, other numerals in this list
also show Quechuan influence.
The most complex of the compounds: maribencor chari
tayac, identified as “21,” appears to again involve the reduced
form mari- (two) prefixed to bencor (ten) in what, to judge
by apar bencor (30), must have been the form of the number
“20.” This is followed by chari (one) and tayac, the latter
being perhaps a conjunction or a compounding element.4
Taken together, the whole can be analyzed as mari-bencor
chari tayac, literally “two-ten one and/plus” or, rearranging
some elements, “two tens and/plus one.” However, we
must leave open the morphemic analysis of tayac, which
might easily involve more than one significant element and
the precise semantic scope of which cannot be ascertained
from a single occurrence. In any case, such recourse to
multiplication and addition within a single system is typical
of numerical systems generally (Closs 1986). Culle, Quingnam, and Pescadora number terms are not known. The Mochica terms
As mentioned, the numbers from one to ten are quite for “21” are our reconstructions based on Carrera’s 1644 discussion. The “Mochica
prefixes” column lists variants of the numbers “1” to “4” when prefixed to words
probably monomorphemic (i.e., unanalyzable and distinct meaning “ten” (compare the Mochica terms for “21” and “30”), the ordinal suffix
unto themselves), a common feature for the terms of the -xa, and the frequentative suffix -xia. Sources are as follows. For Quechua-Cuzco:
first few numbers in any numerical system. For the most Cusihuamán 1976; Farfán 1942. For Quechua-Ancash: Parker 1976. For Aymara:
Briggs 1993; Hardman 2001. For Mochica: Altieri 1939 [Carrera 1644]; Hovdhaugen
part, they are strikingly unlike any numbers hitherto doc- 2004; Salas 2004.
umented on the North Coast of Peru (see Table 1). As a
caveat, we consider it possible—albeit unlikely on the ba-
sis of present evidence—that mata (eight) could conceivably
have originated as ma-ta (two fours). Yet we would hasten to tem of the Magdalena list reflects a short but significant
add that the other numbers show no sign that such a reduced period of contact and resultant influence from Quechuan
form of mari(an) “two” is possible, and tau itself may well speakers, including, possibly, speakers of a now-“lost” Cen-
have been borrowed from Quechua (see below). If so, the tral Coast version of the Quechua language. Second, the
replacement of whatever native term may once have existed discontinuity of the influence—which skips the smallest,
for the number “six” by the possible Quechua borrowing sut most common numbers (one through three), as well as the
(again, see below) makes it difficult to test any hypothesis of basic compounding features noted in the multiples of ten
polymorphemic numbers between five and ten. (21, 30), only reappearing in the widespread form for “100”
The issue of what is borrowed or not, however, is a com- (related forms for which recur, let it be noted, even in Ay-
plex one that we touch on below. For now, we note that the mara and Mochica)—strongly indicates that the Magdalena
numbers four, six, and seven are all remarkably similar to list largely records an otherwise unrecorded language of the
Quechuan terms for these numbers. (See Table 1; the rele- North Coast into which these few Quechuan numbers were
vant comparisons are tau < tawa, sut < soqta and canchen < intrusive.
qanchis.) Apart from the previously mentioned term pachac Which languages borrowed from which is a question
(100)—itself quite likely borrowed from Quechuan—there complicated by the fact that we have no records for entire
are no further similarities between this list of numbers and tongues and precious little understanding of the wealth of
other core Quechua numbers. These similarities suggest two regional dialects that must have been present, not least the
things. First, when the well-documented lexical impact of versions of Quechua previously mentioned. Nonethless, that
Quechua on other languages in the region (Campbell 2004; various Quechua terms for numerals five and higher were ap-
Heggarty 2007) is considered, the relative proximity of the parently borrowed by the nearby Peruvian languages Urarina
numbers four, six, and seven suggests that the number sys- (a Macro-Andean language), Cocama-Cocamilla (a Tupı́an
364 American Anthropologist • Vol. 112, No. 3 • September 2010
language) and Iñapari and Chamicuro (both Maipurean lan-
guages), as discussed by Lyle Campbell (1997), strongly
supports our preferred interpretation that the similarities
between the Quechuan and Magdalena numerals for four,
six, seven, and 100 are best explained by cultural influ-
ence and contact rather than by positing the Magdalena
numeral system as itself a member of the Quechuan family.
Paul Heggarty’s (2007) recent suggestions for a much ear-
lier northward expansion of Quechuan languages than was
previously supposed may also be seen as a measure of sup-
port for this proposal, as it increases the amount of time that
Quechuan would have had to influence indigenous languages
of the North Coast.
If indeed the Magdalena document exhibits a previously
unknown language with Quechuan borrowings, then it is
interesting to note that Quechuan final -a has been lost in
two of them: ∗ tawa > tau (phonetic [su]?) and ∗ soqta >
sut (phonetic [su t]?). This seems to agree with the radical
consonant-final phonology of all but two of the other forms
in the list. Indeed, it is even possible that the orthographic
forms chari and mata themselves hide a final -h, - , or similar
weak, glottalic consonant. These phonological accommo-
dations are another strong indicator of a periodic (rather
than prolonged), remote (rather than recent), and roughly
symmetrical (rather than asymmetrical) period of ethnolin-
guistic contact between Quechuan and the language of the
Magdalena document. Had the contact been either more
prolonged or asymmetrical (i.e., promulgated by a group
of relatively higher sociolinguistic status), we would have
expected to see more suppletion of the original system, as
was the case with other languages surveyed above and their
contact with the Inca or possibly other high-status speakers
of Quechuan. Had the contact been more recent, we might
have expected to see less accommodation of borrowed vo-
cabulary to the phonological constraints of the borrowing
system.
That the number system is decimal in structure is of
interest because the Inka system was also base-ten (Ascher
1986; Urton 1997). Although little research has been done
on other Peruvian prehistoric number systems, there is fairly
strong evidence that the Moche culture (ca. C.E. 100–800),
which preceded Chimu on the North Coast, also used a base-
ten number system (Donnan 2007:199–202). Together,
these lines of evidence suggest that base-ten number sys-
tems may have been widespread in the ancient Andes and
not a late invention of the Inka. The likely commonality
of such systems means that we should not be motivated to
explain the decimal system of the Magdalena document as
another aspect of Quechuan influence.
Importantly, the number terms on the Magdalena paper
bear no obvious affinity to Mochica numbers known from
early sources (e.g., onœc [one], atput [two], çopœt [three];
see De la Carrera y Daza 1939). One possible exception
is himic (possibly nimic) “five.” Although never collected in
a phonemically precise form, various Mochica sources list
the number five as exllmœtzh-, ägmetç, and igmetz ∼ egmets,
among others (see Table 1). The variation is enough to sug-
gest a comparison to himic, yet the similarities also seem
well within the realm of coincidence, especially absent any
other similarities (systematic or otherwise) in the numeri-
cal vocabulary. Particularly troubling to any suggestion of
a deeper relationship between the Magdalena numbers and
Mochica is the consideration that their words for the first
three numbers betray no similarities whatsoever. Compara-
tive historical evidence reveals these numbers to be part of
the endolexicon (core vocabulary) of a language, resistant
to change and borrowing. Consider, for example, the En-
glish one, two, and three and its patterned similarities to the
German ein, zwei, and drei and Latin unus, duo, and tri- as
the legacy of these languages’ shared descent from Proto-
Indo-European. Comparing the first three numbers across
Table 1 reveals that both Quechuan varieties (predictably)
betray strong and systematic relationships in these num-
bers and also disclose certain relationships with Aymaran
(whether genetic or areal is still a matter of debate), but
neither Mochica nor the numbers of the Magdalena docu-
ment reveal any similarities with the lower numbers of these
languages. The most parsimonious conclusion, supported
by comparison across the numbers as a whole, is that they
are not related languages and that, furthermore, neither is
related to Quechuan or Aymaran.
Number systems commonly are built on bases of five,
ten, or 20, and these seem to be related to the digits of a single
hand, both hands, or hands and feet, respectively, although
many other bases are known (see Ascher 1991, 2002; Closs
1986; Menninger 1969; Urton 1997). Furthermore, a dom-
inant number system may be used by a particular society
that employs other systems simultaneously. For example,
until recently in the United Kingdom, the general number
system was base-ten; one system for linear measurement
was base-12 (inches in feet); currency used both base-12 (12
pennies in a shilling) and base-20 (20 shillings in a pound);
and years could also be counted in base-20 (“four score and
seven years ago”). Number systems also can sometimes en-
fold one another so that a base-ten system contains within it
an interest in base-five. Mochica appears to have had such a
concern with base-four. De la Carrera y Daza (1939), writ-
ing in the 17th century, noted that the numbers one through
four had two variants, one used alone and the other (see
Table 1: Mochica prefixes) employed as a prefix for words
meaning “ten” as well as before the ordinal suffix -xa and the
frequentative suffix -xia (Hovdhaugen 2004:26).
The numbers from the Magdalena document are there-
fore best seen as examples of a “new,” previously undoc-
umented language. Further, as a logical exercise, without
forgetting our earlier caveats concerning the paucity of rele-
vant linguistic evidence, consider the following: if Mochica
and Quingnam were related, then the language of the num-
ber list must be neither of these tongues; alternatively, if
Quingnam and Pescadora were related or were the same
tongue, as Cerrón-Palomino (1995) proposes, then it may
be that language or a relative. It also does not appear to
 Quilter et al.
be related to Culli (or Culle), an autochthonous language
spoken in the adjacent highlands in Huamachuco (Lau in
press; Topic 1998:109–127). Although we have very lit-
tle information on Culli, and no evidence whatsoever of its
numeral system, available word lists reveal a radically dif-
ferent phonology than that disclosed by the language of the
Magdalena document.
IDENTIFICATION OF THE LANGUAGE
Although the number list on the Magdalena document pro-
vides evidence of a newly discovered numeral system, it
also impedes easy comparison with other languages. Num-
ber sequences do not necessarily provide linguistic clues
to how languages are generally structured because numbers
commonly are relatively isolated within a narrow, repetitive
system. The apparent borrowing of some of the numbers on
our document from Quechuan, however, does offer some
data that allow us to consider the nature of this previously
unknown tongue.
It is possible that the language of the numbers is
Pescadora. Calancha says of it:
That which among them is called La Pescadora more resembles
a language for the stomach, than for understanding; it is clipped,
tough-sounding, guttural, and surly; with these two most com-
mon languages the communication of the valleys was held, and
the commerce and business dealings of these territories was con-
ducted. [Rabinowitz, trans., 1982:250]
Although the derogatory remark on the guttural sound of
Pescadora is a subjective judgment, the list of numbers we
have found does present a series of words that might under-
standably have been interpreted as short (because they are
monosyllabic) and clipped (because they are consonant final),
especially given the preference for polysyllabic, vowel-final
words in Spanish as well as in Quechua and Aymara, easily
the best-known South American languages during the Colo-
nial era. More significant, perhaps, is the mention that two
different languages were used for commerce and business
dealings. The separate number system expressed in the doc-
ument suggests just such a role for the language in question.
Although we note the apparent Quechuan borrowings in the
recorded words above, we also stress the periodic, relatively
symmetric, and remote nature of the probable contact situ-
ation. We in fact know so little of indigenous languages in
prehispanic Peru that the few words in question could eas-
ily be accounted for by interactions of fishing communities
along the coast, including contact with a lost Quechua of
the Central Coast, rather than necessarily being the result of
the mixing of people and languages during the tumult of the
early Colonial Period (see Ramı́rez 1996).
Sometime between 1555 and 1560, the Dominican friar
Reginaldo de Lizárraga (1987) journeyed to the Chicama
Valley. He reported that there were two tongues spoken
by the “indians of the valley.” The one spoken by fisherfolk
was “extremely difficult” (difficultosı́sima) and the other less
so, although few spoke “the common tongue of the Inkas.”
The time of Lizárraga’s journey was before the implemen-
• Traces of a Lost Language and Number System 365
tation of the reducción policy and before the El Niño flood
that destroyed the first Santa Marı́a Magdalena de Cao set-
tlement. However, more than three decades later in 1589,
Torı́bio Mogrovejo, a missionary who traveled widely over
Peru, visited the town when it was at the archaeological site
we investigated. Torı́bio reported that the resident priest
there, Fray Bartolomé de Vargas, was a good speaker of the
pescador languages (buen lenguaraz de las lenguas pescadora;
Benito 2006:52). How the use here of the plural—the lan-
guages, rather than language, of the fisherfolk—should be
interpreted is open to question. It does suggest that more
than one indigenous language (or, at a minimum, more than
one dialect) was spoken by the local padre and, therefore,
by local people.
As we know little about “standard” languages of the pre-
Inka conquest and prehispanic periods, we know even less
about how groups that were socially peripheral, although
extremely important economically, to agricultural and pas-
toral communities, such as fisherfolk, may have interacted
with one another. The question is an important one, for the
combination of linguistic diversity and economic interdepen-
dency is a recipe for the creation of pidgins (simplified trade
languages modeled on the vocabularies of higher-status lan-
guages, tethered to widely shared grammatical and seman-
tic features in the borrowing languages). Joel Rabinowitz
(1982:258–259), for instance, interprets Pescadora as pos-
sibly a highly developed pidgin, evolving initially from the
unique environmental distinctiveness, subsistence special-
ization, and social isolation of fishing communities, as noted
by Marı́a Rostworowski de Diez Canseco (1977). He also
emphasizes that communities with high mobility that are
engaged in commerce commonly develop their own pidgin
languages for ease of communication. The apparent Quechua
influences in the number list might in this view be interpreted
as part of such a pidgin language, but the problem remains
that the borrowed terms are limited and do not replace the
lowest numbers. Thus, although the confident identification
of a pidgin language in this region could stand to tell us a
great deal about the nature of socioeconomic relationships
on the prehispanic North Coast of Peru, it must unfortu-
nately await significantly more data than that provided by
the short list of numbers on the Magdalena document.
Alternatively, the Chimu culture was strongly focused
on maritime activities, and one or more languages spoken
within it also seem to have had strong maritime associ-
ations (Campana Delgado 2006; Pillsbury 1996). Again,
if Pescadora is, indeed, Quingnam, as Cerrón-Palomino
(1995) suggests, then the language of our document may also
be Quingnam–Pescadora. Given the dearth of our knowl-
edge on the rich and varied languages of Peru in late pre-
history and the Colonial Period, however, a final resolution
of this issue remains elusive. That said, the recent discovery
of the Magdalena document is testament to a potentially
large and previously untapped body of information against
which present ethnolinguistic models and theories may yet
be profitably tested.
366 American Anthropologist • Vol. 112, No. 3 • September 2010
CONCLUSION
Although this small list of numbers has offered new data on
language and numeracy in prehispanic and Colonial Peru, it
also emphasizes how much remains to be learned. We do
not definitively state that the number list documents previ-
ously unrecorded words from the Quingnam–Pescadora lan-
guage(s), but we believe that it remains a viable possibility.
We can definitively state, however, that this language is not
Mochica and that its speakers must have had at least some
contact with Quechuan speakers (as revealed in the bor-
rowed vocabulary for several numbers)—albeit of a punc-
tuated, symmetrical, and probably remote nature. It is cer-
tainly a previously unknown language, although we hope that
it is further chronicled in documents yet to be discovered,
whether by archivists or archaeologists.
As the global diversity of human languages and number
systems continues to decline (Austin 2008; Comrie 2005),
this small piece of paper, recovered by the archaeologist’s
spade, has helped to open a window on these often evanes-
cent aspects of culture. Nevertheless, much remains to be
understood regarding this information recorded some four
centuries ago. It presents novel views related to theories of
the language history of the Central Andes, such as the rela-
tionship of Quechua with other tongues as well as variability
in Quechua itself (Heggarty and Beresford-Jones in press).
And although Franz Boas taught us long ago that race, lan-
guage, and culture are not inextricably bound together, they
often are linked to each other as well as to issues of class,
population movements, and many other aspects of society
and culture. This little piece of paper, thus, is an exam-
ple of how the “traditional” subdisciplines of anthropology
and related fields—in this case, archaeology, linguistics, and
history—can still work cooperatively to investigate data and
issues of shared concerns.
Jeffrey Quilter Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology,
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
Marc Zender Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology,
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
Karen Spalding Department of History, University of Connecticut,
Storrs, CT, 06269
Régulo Franco Jordán Fundación Wiese, Lima 27, Peru
César Gálvez Mora National Institute of Culture, Trujillo, La Liber-
tad, Peru
Juan Casta ñeda Murga National University of Peru, Trujillo, La
Libertad, Peru
NOTES
Acknowledgments. We thank many for helping us with the var-
ied aspects of retrieving and studying the Magdalena document. In
particular, we thank Jaime Jimenez S., Assistant Field Director of
excavations at Magdalena de Cao, and Marı́a Fernanda Boza C., crew
chief. The latter quickly realized the importance of the paper when
it was discovered under her supervision. We also greatly appreciate
the ministrations of Carmen Gamarra, Laboratory Director of the
Museo de Cao, in cleaning and conserving the letter as well as many
other artifacts that we have recovered in our work. We also wish
to thank Sra. Ada Arrieta, librarian and paleographer at the Instituto
Riva Aguero of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, for her
help with the transcription of the letter. Zender wishes to acknowl-
edge several years of fruitful conversations on comparative numeral
systems with R. Radhakrishnan and Adam Singerman. We would
also like to thank Tom Boellstorff, AA editor-in-chief, Gary Urton,
our colleague here at Harvard University, and three anonymous AA
reviewers. We found all of their comments on earlier drafts helpful
and insightful, and they have stimulated considerable improvements
to this article in its final version. Michele L. Koons also was of great
help in researching and developing Table 1. The research that led to
the discovery of this paper was funded, at various stages, by Dumbar-
ton Oaks, the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 0514330), the
National Endowment for the Humanities (Award No. RZ-50423-05),
the National Geographic Society, and the Peabody Museum, Harvard
University. All are profusely thanked. A special thank you is also
offered to the Fundación Wiese, Lima, and to Marco Aveggio of that
institution, whose generosity to project members is extraordinary
and very much appreciated.
1. The full name of the settlement was Santa Marı́a Magdalena
de Cao, but it was commonly called Magdalena de Cao, Mag-
dalena, Cao, and other shorthand terms even during its occu-
pation, which we know from some of the written letters we
have found. We use these as well as Magdalena de Cao, Viejo
(Old Magdalena de Cao), to refer to the archaeological site at
the El Brujo Archaeological Complex. The modern town of
Magdalena de Cao is four kilometers north of the site.
2. A vara was a common unit of measurement equaling approx-
imately 1.68 meters. A real was a coin worth one-eighth of a
silver peso.
3. The word pachak is long enough to make coincidence unlikely,
the form and its history are reasonably clear in the Quechuan
languages (see Table 1), and the same term is well-known
as a loan from Quechuan into Aymaran, Mochica, and other
languages of the region (Campbell 1997). Given these con-
siderations, and other apparent Quechuan loan words in the
document under investigation, borrowing seems the more
parsimonious explanation of pachac as well.
4. As one of our reviewers cogently observes: “While the ef-
fect of tayac is clearly to indicate addition, a look at other
languages across the world suggests a wide range of possible
linguistic devices, including, in addition to a conjunction or
compounding element, an adposition (e.g. ‘on’) or an adverb
(‘left over’).” We concur wholeheartedly and do not mean to
propose “plus” as a literal or definitive rendering but merely as
a term of convenience for the evident mathematical function
of the word in this context. Indeed, absent any other contex-
tual evidence, we would leave open questions of the precise
morphemic division, grammatical status, and semantic range
of tayac.
 Quilter et al.
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FOR FURTHER READING
(These selections were made by the American Anthropologist editorial
interns as examples of research related in some way to this article. They do
not necessarily reflect the views of the author.)
 Quilter et al.
Buckley, Liam
2005 Objects of Love and Decay: Colonial Photographs in a
Postcolonial Archive. Cultural Anthropology 20(2):249–270.
Collins, John
2008 “But What If I Should Need to Defecate in Your Neighbor-
hood, Madame?”: Empire, Redemption, and the “Tradition of
the Oppressed” in a Brazilian World Heritage Site. Cultural
Anthropology 23(2):279–328.
Goldstein, Robin Coleman
2008 Hearths, Grinding Stones, and Households: Rethinking
Domestic Economy in the Andes. Archeological Papers of
the American Anthropological Association 18(1):37–48.
• Traces of a Lost Language and Number System 369
Silverman, Helaine
2002a Narratives of Identity and History in Modern
Cemeteries of Lima, Peru. Archeological Papers of
the American Anthropological Association 11(1):167–
190.
2002b Touring Ancient Times: The Present and Presented Past in
Contemporary Peru. American Anthropologist 104(3):881–
902.
Teresa de la Piedra, Maria
2009 Hybrid Literacies: The Case of a Quechua Community in
the Andes. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 40(2):110–
128.